Tag New York Times

Day 3 of 10-hour day shift in the warehouse: Podcast reviews

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

(And a foster cat and teenager update)

This new work week is certainly moving quickly although each day I come home more exhausted. I’m hurting more once I get home, but I’m fine for the first 9+ hours of my shift. If you don’t know what I’m talking about read these:

Yesterday

Sunday

The teenager kept my car as the last two of our fosters who needed to be spayed went to Canyon River Run today. That would be Mama Danu and her tabby kitten Baile from the Celtic Pride.

Georgie (lower left) and Baile (silver tabby)

She hoped to bake cookies for the platters Feline Urban Rescue and Rehab plans to distribute to the many vets who assist the organization. Her eighth grade boyfriend came over to lend a helping hand so she also taught him to make bread.

Meanwhile I just kept dreaming of an iced cold Coke Zero. And an interesting thing happened — I got to work and there was a 4-pack of 20-ounce Coke Zero bottles with a post-it note declaring them free.

I brought them home. My guess is someone didn’t realize Coke Zero had been relabeled in the same red as classic Coke.

Which my metrics tanked by the end of the day which had me chugging this at 3 p.m. break.

My 4 p.m., I was trembling and about to cry. Do. Not. Repeat.

I treated the teenager to dinner at Tic Toc so she could get her last pay check. We both ate too much.

I did my physical therapy exercises and took a hot shower. By the end of the shower my right leg was very uncomfortable so I took a low dose muscle relaxer and covered my leg, knee and back with CBD Medic’s Arthritis Cream.

One more day.

So now, as promised, let me offer some thoughts on podcasts. The teenager and I compared notes on our Spotify end-of-year wrap up and she thought she was impressive with 17,000 minutes since we started using the service in mid-year. I have 88,000+.

MY FAVORITE PODCASTS I LISTENED TO SO FAR THIS WEEK:

  • This one surprises me. The Ellen Fisher Podcast. She’s a very interesting person with her journey to raise her own food in Hawaii with her brood of plant-based kids and interest in all things calm and positive. I don’t really don’t know how I feel about her podcast — but I recently listened to her episode on Mind Change. It was an interesting discussion of neuroscience facts blended with alternative healing techniques to deal with personal trauma to heal the body of disease and mental illness. The guests on the show discuss their experience that illness, whether physical or mental, is the body manifesting trauma that the person has refused to acknowledge and heal.
  • The Daily. I often force myself to listen to the Daily even when the topics don’t interest me. This week I found myself pleasantly surprised by their coverage of Stephen Sondheim’s death.
  • Snacks Daily. Snacks Daily is a brief podcast from Robin Hood, yes the investment folks. It’s an economic summary of course, but it also provides humor and the business side of the news.
  • I finished Sh**hole Countries by Radiotopia. The American host on that show grapples with the possibility that her Ghanaian parents want her to move to Ghana. Enjoyable but also not what I expected. The host uses much of her platform to talk about her queerness and human rights.
  • The Shit No One Tells You About Writing. Very useful and broad tips about writing, critiquing and publishing.
  • Africa Daily just did a good episode on fistula. I found that a surprising topic. I’m impressed. (Though they did not mention the prevalence of female genital cutting and its impact on the rate of fistula.)

Other notables: Power Hugh Hefner, American Scandal The Lewinsky Affair, Operator, Against the Odds Rock Climbers Abducted.

And here is a video of Nala the Goffins Cockatoo: Nala harassing foster cat tripod Louise

Good night all.

Week Four of Physical Training at Apex and more thoughts on Disability

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

When I turned up at the Apex Gym today for my first session of the week, I was accompanied by the teenager and her dog. They were both impressed— and in the dog’s case confused— that my trainer Dan was wearing his baby.

I am always impressed with the different bodies I see at the gym and the attention both trainers give to their clients.

There was a woman at the gym finishing her session when I arrived. She was working hard with some dumbbells, with her back to me. She was older than I was, and overweight, probably at least obese by BMI standards (because I am overweight by BMI standards).

But she was uneven, with 80% of her excess weight in her legs.

And just like with me, Dan supported her and challenged her as if we were athletes. You could tell she was proud of herself, and I was proud of her.

And I couldn’t wait to tell my trainer Dan that I can already feel my body moving better. In his eyes, he calls it “a little increased mobility” and to me, I feel like my knees are moving the correct direction.

I told him that I got to pick at the Stitch Fix Bizzy Hizzy and covered about 6,000 steps and pulled 216 items in less than three hours. Now those aren’t stellar numbers, but I haven’t left QC in months. And I didn’t hurt.

If this Apex experience doesn’t teach me to participate in exercise and strength training daily, nothing will.

Today’s workout t-shirt was “let’s hit the bar” by The Fitness Tee Company and my trainer Dan let out an enthusiastic battle cry. We did hit the bar, and we added weight to it. I really enjoy bench press.

In other news, I listened to the latest podcast from the NYT Daily Sunday Read, “The Man who filed 180 disability lawsuits.” It looked at the “industry” of people hired by lawyers to find non-ADA-compliant businesses. And sue them.

I need to digest this more, but the reporter interviewed a small restaurant that almost lost everything because of such a lawsuit, in what seemed a situation where a new restaurant just had everything go wrong.

But the reporter also interviewed the litigant who said businesses have a responsibility to know the law better (my note: it’s almost 300 pages) and that being disabled is expensive so these lawsuits help pay for his equipment and care.

Link to the podcast on Spotify.

Luau luncheon at the Bizzy Hizzy

Changes are brewing at work. Tomorrow I learn the infamous mailer machine and QC Valley 0 has been transformed into a test site to see if QC centers can prep their own boxes as they fold each fix.

I’m terrified of this. I have a really awkward relationship with packing tape.

Could Poetry Journaling be the new Bullet Journal?

Angel Ackerman 3 Comments

My neighbor Sarah asked me to listen to the episode of Ezra Klein’s podcast featuring Jeff Tweedy of the band Wilco. The journalist and the musician were discussing creativity.

Tweedy talked about writing first thing in the morning before anything else— no news, no email, no thought. Just words on a page.

Ezra said when he tries that all he ends up with are to-do lists.

Their discussion got me thinking about my own regular journaling practice which I started 30 years ago. In recent years much of what I have noted is done bullet style with occasional deep dives into the events of my life.

But what if I phrased anything I put in my journal as poems? Horrible terrible poems but poems.

For instance, instead of writing “Foster cats Khloe and Louise are getting closer to liking each other every day. They now sleep on the same bed at the same time with only a foot or two between them” it could be something like…

The fleet foot one is moody,
The clumsy one timid. 
The who among them that starts the throaty snarls varies from time to time. 
Slowly, their soft warm bodies 
draw closer to each other, 
ignoring the other princess drifting to slumber in the soft blankets.
When we find them, these insecure beasts of opposing kingdoms, their paws might almost touch.

To learn more about the Ezra Klein Podcast from the New York Times, click here.

Goals, stubbornness and success—and pain

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

So much happened today.

Or yesterday.

I promised myself I wouldn’t publish this draft until morning because I was both lost in thought and celebrating teenager #1’s first official job (her first unofficial job was as a costumed character) by trying the pink lemonade vodka. I was exhausted and I suspect I am slightly inebriated now.

I received a $7,000 medical bill for my August 3, 2020 hospital visit. My out-of-pocket cost is $500-something. Six months ago. And I think this is just for the first of four days.

But let’s go backwards… Teenager #1 and I went to Dunkin to get a free drink— I chose the iced Pink Velvet Macchiato (made with skim milk). At this point, caffeine, sugar and a double dose of naproxen sodium is the only way I can survive my shift.

I talked to my chiropractor and she said to continue my physical therapy stretches and that the fact I am no longer in pain in the morning is a good sign. But that my body was “off level” more strongly than usual. I had noticed my right side was bothering me instead of the left so is my body trying to compensate? And am I developing nerve pain in my spine from standing so much? She said all is possible. And then she moved everything around.

I then heard someone I used to work with (and someone I greatly respect and enjoy the company of) is becoming the general manager of a local cannibas dispensary. And more than one person has recommended medical marijuana to me, so it gets me thinking. But I’ve never smoked a cigarette and only ever had one hit of pot so I don’t know how I feel about that idea.

So with all this is mind, I purchased my coffee and dropped the teenager off at her first day of work.

As expected, I was in QC again so I took my two naproxen sodium and headed out.

Podcasts helped keep me motivated. Now, I am about to murder someone if one more of my regular podcasts talks about love and sex for Valentine’s Day. But this one didn’t let me down. Stand up comedy featuring Bert Kreischer — Bert : A Joke About Pajamas (podcast) and I got really excited about the New York Times The Daily Podcast talking about France, Islam and laïcité. This is the exact stuff I wrote a thesis about and I can’t believe this conversation is still happening. It’s very parallel to race relations here in the United States.

If you want to listen: France, Islam & Laïcité

This got me thinking about my hope to update and publish my thesis. That needs to become a plan.

About two hours in to my shift, one of the people I report to stopped by to check on me. We had an interesting conversation. It started with: “How do you feel about QC?”

I told her everything about my love-hate relationship with QC. How it aggravates my cerebral palsy. How it does not fall within my natural skill set. How it physically hurts.

“We don’t want you to be in pain.”

You don’t?

Pain is like a grouchy friend at this point. We’re used to each other. I never had an employer say that before. And I told her I know I need to have more conversations with the supervisory team about this.

The conversation ended with: “Would you like to be permanently assigned to pick?”

But I’m stubborn and I want to get at least closer to the goal, which I’m told now is 104 not 130. She critiqued my work and I learned some better techniques.

I said I’d like to see if I can improve and then go back to pick.

And I felt energized, excited, and good at my job. I decided not to obsess over the numbers and just work as hard as I could and see where the numbers fell. That didn’t work. By the end of the night I had my worst night ever— I QC’ed 78 fixes.

This was devastating to my psyche. Perhaps, in part, because it revives some past employment trauma where I wanted to succeed and I was doing everything I was asked to do, but I just couldn’t meet the same expectations the employer had.

Perhaps it was because I have that personality where I hate to fail.

Perhaps it was because as someone with a disability I feel like I am under more pressure than the average person to prove my worth and that my performance makes a statement not only for me but also sets a standard for how others like me will be treated in the future.